The mountain, when they reached it the next morning, was marvelously different. The steam dummy passed the last house, and the negro shacks sprawling beyond, and began to puff and cough up the steep slope.
It was May, and the boy's dreamy fancies were caught and tangled in the green vistas that endlessly opened and closed on both sides of the track. Below the fill on the town side a succession of heavy-fruited blackberry bushes ran close to the tracks. The broad leaves and waxen flowers of the May-apple carpeted unexpected clearings. A shapeless negress, four babies clutching her skirts, balanced her heavy basket on her head, and blinked stolidly at them.
At last they struck the level gap road, and the end of the dummy line just beyond.
Pelham gathered wild flowers, as they climbed up to the northern crest of the gap. They were for his mother, if they could be induced to last until night. On the top overlooking the wide valley he found a convenient rise of rock steps, shaped out of the solid iron ore; while his father and Mr. Guild talked and pointed, he sat down, fanning himself with his sailor....
The men strolled back, Paul's face flushed. He gestured impetuously from the elevation to the citied valley below. "A magnificent chance, Nathaniel. Your mountain grips me."
"It'll take a long time, remember. Don't go off half-cocked."
"The thing's here before my eyes!"
"Adamsville won't really touch the mountain for ten years. It's good ... fine residence property, but.... That's the Crenshaw land, just beyond. They have four eighties; they run all the way to this road." The heads bent over the map again.
"We've simply got to take it all," Paul reiterated.
Guild's familiar cautions and objections came forth again. "Not that I wouldn't like to, but...."